Least of al with Marc. He was as good a kisser as he was everything else.
Al around us, computers buzzed and whirred.
Marc worked out of his apartment as a reverse-hacker. Security companies hired him to try and break into their client’s computer networks. If Marc found an opening-and he always did-the security company knew to develop appropriate countermeasures.
In other words, Marc made his living doing things most people would go to jail for. But then again, so did I.
In addition to being good at sex, Marc was handsome as hel. He was just a little tal er than me which made him kind of short. His body had obviously never seen the inside of a gym.
Sometimes he’d cal himself “fat” but he wasn’t. He wasn’t in great shape like a cover boy, but he was warm and strong and his skin was the smoothest I’ve ever felt. He must have been in his mid-thirties, but he could pass for younger. He had luxuriously black curly hair that I could spend hours running my hands through.
Had I met him under other circumstances, I might have been tempted to go out with him, except for one smal thing: I wasn’t entirely sure he ever went out.
Marc lived his life almost entirely on the Web. He ordered groceries and meals on the Internet. His movies, music, and pornography arrived over his FIOS line. He even hooked up with me through Mrs.
Cherry’s Web site.
“Mmmm,” I said, pul ing away from his embrace.
“It’s been kind of a long day. Do you want me to grab a shower?”
Marc licked me from my neck to my ear, whispering, “only if I can join you.”
I put my arms back around him, hooking my thumbs into the back of his jeans. I started pushing down. “Wanna get wet?”
Marc pressed his impressive bulge against me.
“I’m already getting wet.”
“Sweet talker.”
Marc took my T-shirt off and put his lips to my right nipple. He sucked hard and I gasped with pleasure.
“Fuck the shower,” Marc said, putting his hands under my ass. He lifted me off the ground and I wrapped my legs around his back. He carried me towards the bedroom. “Let’s fuck.”
An hour later, I needed the shower even more. Marc lay on top of me, the drying evidence of my orgasm threatening to permanently glue us together. Marc tossed his condom on the floor, where it landed with a wet plop.
“Damn, that was good. How much,” Marc asked playful y, “would it cost to have you move in?”
“More than you could afford.” I ran my hands down his back.
“Hey, careful what you say,” Marc smiled. “You’re talking to a man who can hack into the bank accounts of seven of the world’s ten richest men.”
“Only seven?”
“The other three haven’t hired me yet to try,” Marc answered. He rol ed off me, finding out too late how sticky dried cum can be. “Ouch!”
“Love hurts,” I said.
“You’re tel ing me,” Marc answered. “And I haven’t even paid yet.”
“Listen,” I said, thinking of the uncomfortable couch and my mother’s snoring awaiting me at home, “if you want I can stay the night.”
“I’d like that,” Marc said, “but I’m kind of in the middle of breaking into the satel ite systems of a smal Central American nation. I better get back to work.”
“No problem,” I said, disappointed.
I couldn’t help but think that Richard Gere never kicked Julia Roberts out.
Maybe I should have held back on the kissing.
After I got dressed, Marc slipped two hundred dol ar bil s into my hand. “I’l settle the rest up with Mrs.
Cherry online,” he told me.
“You’re great,” I said, giving him a hug.
“You too,” he said. “What’s your schedule like next week?” I told him the nights I was free, and he said he’d get back to me. It was a sil y dance we did, because we both knew he’d never schedule a date in advance. In Marc’s virtual reality, everything came to him when he wanted it, and he never knew what he’d want from one moment to the next. If he saw me online when he was horny, he’d get in touch and we’d get together. If I wasn’t available, another rentboy would enjoy his generosity.
Although he always told me I was his favorite.
Which I didn’t doubt, because he was my favorite client.
“Maybe next time,” he said, “you could do it.”
“Do what?”
“You know,” he said, shyly. “Spend the night. If you want to, I mean.”
Marc looked sweet and vulnerable, even younger than he usual y did.
Maybe Marc’s earlier rejection of my offer to stay had less to do with his work than with his fear of getting too close to someone. It wasn’t an accident, I thought, that he’s locked himself in this computer wonderland.
Maybe he wasn’t locking himself in as much as he was locking everyone else out.
Maybe he needed someone to knock down the door.
He was sweet, he was handsome, he was sexy, and he was rich. Maybe that someone should be me.
Maybe this kind of thinking gets a hustler in trouble.
“Give ‘em your mouth, your dick, and your ass,”
Mrs. Cherry once told me, “but do me a favor: keep your heart to yourself.”
“Maybe I can,” I told Marc.
But I knew I probably shouldn’t.
I sneaked into my apartment somewhere around one. My mother’s snoring combined with the lumpy couch to defeat any chance of sleep. I tossed and turned for awhile, but eventual y gave in to pharmaceutical assistance and popped an Ambien.
What do you get when you cross someone with hyperactivity with a sleeping pil? Someone who can’t wait to fal asleep. Get it?
So, after ten restless minutes, I popped another pil. That did the trick. Sleep hit me like a hammer.
CHAPTER 8
“Good morning, gorgeous!” someone shouted into my face. I groggily opened my unwil ing eyes. Features slowly came into focus: blood-red lipstick, long, false eyelashes, heavily teased wig.
Oh my God, I thought, a demented drag queen has broken into my apartment!
Then I remembered.
“Mom. What time is it?” I croaked
“Wake up time,” she said. She leaned over to kiss me on the cheek. “Smel.”
I covered my mouth. “I haven’t brushed yet,” I explained.
“No, you don’t smel,” she said. “Wel, maybe a little. I mean: smel.” She took a deep breath.
I did too. Oh my god. Bacon. French toast.
Hazelnut coffee. If I hadn’t woken up with a morning erection (thank you Lord for the blanket that covered my lap), I’d have sprung one there and then.
“See what you can do with food?” my mother said.
“It’s cal ed ‘cooking.’”
After breakfast with my mother, I went to the gym. I was doing pul — ups, my least favorite exercise, and thinking about what Tony told me.
“Just walk away.”
He was right, of course. I had about as much business solving a murder as Sherlock Holmes did turning tricks.
Stil, several things nagged at me.
Not the least of which was that I couldn’t believe Al en would have kil ed himself.
I don’t care what Tony told me about a recent rash of gay suicides. Al en was a happy, vital man, and he never would have taken his own life.
Someone must have kil ed him.
But who?
His children were obvious suspects.
Both Michael, the tal, handsome one, and Paul, the fey dandy, hated their father. Perhaps they had other motives, too. Maybe they didn’t believe he had cut them from his wil. Were they expecting a windfal from Al en’s fal from a window?
There were other suspects, too.
I stil had questions about Randy Bostinick, the hustler I had hooked Al en up with. Randy had a kil er temper. But did he have a killer’s temper? I couldn’t say.
Then there was Roger Folds, the development director at The Stuff of Life. While I didn’t have any reason to think he was capable of murder, it was pretty strange that he stopped coming to work right around the time of Al en’s death. And his co-worker Vicki had told me something else… what was it?